“AT&T Home Security System - Telephone Line & Remembered Events”

 By Ron Stultz

28 May 2007

The design of the central controller (CC) includes a function where if it can not contact a monitoring station via the auto dialer, it remembers all events until it can actually connect with a monitoring station.

Let me explain. Recently, I decided that it had been some time since I checked the auto dialer function of my system and so I called the monitoring company and told them I was about to test the system. I armed the system, tripped one of the door sensors, waited and then shut down the alarm. When I called the monitoring company, they had not received a burglar arm signal from my CC.

After several hours of tracking down possible phone line connection problems, I finally got telephone service restored to my CC. Now proceed forward 4 hours or so and a telephone call comes in, which the caller ID unit says is from "Name Unavailable" and "Telephone Number Unavailable" and so I do not answer it. Several minutes later, I see a fire truck going down the street in front of my home and then another fire truck. Finally, as it appears the trucks are stopped right in front of my house, I go to the front door and open it to find firemen coming towards me and asking where the fire is? Apparently, the CC had been unable to connect to the monitoring station for so long that various events had been stored up in its local memory such that when I restored a working telephone line, it contacted the monitoring station and reported several fire alarms and a burglar alarm. The monitoring station had tried to call me ("Name Unavailable")  but I had not answered and so they dispatched the fire company. Embarrassment but something learned: the CC remembers all events such as fire and burglar until it can report them and it remembers multiple events and not just one.

The bottom line then is, that if your CC is moved or you do test your CC and find it is not making a connection with the monitoring company, immediately upon restoring telephone service to your CC, test the connection to the monitoring company again, so that the CC can report all alarm events and clear its alarm events memory.